infinity on high
by wallywesting
Summary: and they'll find that life might be enchanting after all/ a series of oneshots set during the time skip. #3: ZatannaDick, parlor tricks.
1. the out

the out

Mal tells him to write it out.

"Best cure for heartbreak is to just write, I think," he says. "All the really good novels were written because of a woman. They ruin everything, but they make great inspiration for writing."

Conner has forgotten why they are even having this conversation.

"I read this book once by this Russian guy, I think I still have it, I'll check later. Anyway, it's about this guy who becomes completely obsessed with this woman, like she ruins his entire life but he doesn't even care because he's just, I mean, in the most insane way possible. And apparently, the author, the Russian guy, he wrote the novel to cope with his wife leaving him, which basically turned his life to shit, and you know what? That book is like, required reading for seniors. It's real popular. So, there is something good that can come out of this after all."

He beams Conner with a hopeful smile and it occurs to Conner that he requires a reply, so he says, "Huh."

He locks himself in his room and pulls out a pen and paper and stares at the blank, unblemished white that stares right back. He doesn't remember asking Mal for advice, but he does remember needing it, so here goes.

M'gann.

He glances at his watch and notes, with some surprise, that two hours have passed and all he has written is her name. What else is he supposed to write? What else is there? And how in the hell is he supposed to find a way to capture everything she is on a flat piece of paper with a pen that he can break with a single look?

He tears the paper up into a thousand little pieces and tosses them away from him, watches as they land, one by one, on a pile on the floor like so much snow.

.::.

Nightwing tells him to fuck it out.

Not in so many words, but that is what Conner gathers.

"You see," Nightwing says, putting his hands out in front of him and trying to convey his feelings with them but all he ends up doing is making a gesture like he's trying to twist something. "You need a rebound. The only way to get over a girl is to get with another one. Two girls, they cancel each other out. Result? A totally whelmed dude."

Conner has no idea why he's even here. Nightwing is the last person he should come to for advice about this, although he barely remembers how they even came to talk about this in the first place.

"It's not even hard, all you need to do is walk around campus for a while and some girl's bound to jump right in front of you, or even on you if you play it right. It's not hard, trust me. And the best part is that you don't even have to do anything. Girls are such a handful that you won't even be aware of how much energy you're spending not thinking about M'gann, it'll just move straight to all the attention the girl needs. Get me?"

"Huh," Conner says when Nightwing pauses for a reply.

He goes to his morning class the next day and sits by a girl he doesn't even know, and who greets him with a cheery, "Hey, Conner."

He thinks she'll do, and he takes her to a coffee shop after class is over and she talks, and he listens, and it's pleasant.

The best part is that she's nothing like M'gann. She has black hair that is long and curly and her laugh is quiet, she almost hides it behind her hand, and she talks about trivial things like films and travelling. Her mouth is different, not like the pink lips he knows so well, and her nose is a little longer, and she has no freckles and there are tan lines on her shoulders and a beauty spot on her chin—

"Hello!"

He starts, a little more than he should, and she's smiling at him knowingly, but she doesn't even know anything about anything.

"I'm sorry," he tells her.

"Oh, no, it's okay. I zone out all the time. So, what's on your mind?"

He's been asked that a thousand times by many different people, but never once by the only person that ever mattered because she didn't need to.

"Nothing," he says, and then, "I should get going."

He supposes that the purpose of the outing was to, in fact, fuck it out, as Nightwing had basically put it, but he doesn't stick around to see that outcome because she doesn't even look like M'gann and she still reminds him of her.

.::.

Wally tells him to drink it out.

"Granted, it might take a little longer for you to get wasted, but you're half human, so maybe just twice as much alcohol as normal? I don't know, but it works."

It is utterly beyond Conner that he has found himself in California, talking to Wally, of all people, about this, of all things.

"Alcohol solves everything, I swear. It's like liquid happiness. If you want, I could go with you. We could get hella drunk together. My fast metabolism and your super-ness make us ideal drinking buddies."

Wally nudges him and winks, and his red hair catches and scatters rays of sunlight and brings a tightening sensation to Conner's chest.

"Huh," he says. "Makes sense."

Wally throws an arm around Conner's shoulder. "We're going to get wasted tonight, and I'm going to pair you up with a hot girl, and you're gonna get all this angst out of you, and tomorrow you'll be right as rain."

"Sounds pretty straightforward."

"It's foolproof."

They take shots. Seven before he feels anything. Five more before he leans back in the booth he and Wally have annexed and all his muscles have loosened and after three more shots, Wally's lying across the length of the table sucking on a lime and Conner stares at the dance floor of the dim bar and sees a couple of girls moving in time to the beat he feels as though it's reverberating in his very bones.

"Why don't we hang out more?" Wally asked, his voice slurred, and he tosses the lime and it hits Conner's chest. "We should hang out more. I know a lot of places. Girls. Lots of girls. Artemis is the only one for me, I mean, come on, how could I let that go? But it's always nice to have them around."

"Hmm," Conner says. He blinks to regain focus but it's like there's a haze over everything, makes lights shimmer, air around girls vibrate, and Wally raises his hand to get the attention of the waitress.

She brings over four more shots. "You guys are bringing it all home, huh?" she says. She's blonde, and the top two buttons of her shirt are undone. Conner realizes he's staring when she snaps her fingers an inch from his nose but her expression is more amused than offended.

"This dude's really feeling it, Wall-man."

"Darcy, tonight's all about feeling it," Wally mutters. He pulls himself up long enough to down a shot before falling back down and takes another slice of lime to put into his mouth.

The girl sets the two glasses before Conner and walks away, glancing over her shoulder once to give him a smile. When Wally finally decides it's time to leave, his buzz being rapidly killed by his metabolism, they pass the bar and Wally tosses a bill onto the counter.

Darcy says, "Leaving already?" and she gives Conner another smile and that is enough, apparently, for Wally to toss Conner at the counter too and leave.

"I...might stay," Conner says, and her smile widens.

They walk down quiet, sleeping streets to her place and Conner's still a little drunk when she kisses him in front of her house and he freezes, thoughts mushing together into one blob of M'gann, her eyes, her smile, her kisses, her quiet presence in his mind and he jumps back, his heart beating so loudly in his chest that it's all he can hear, a deafening, crashing _thud thud thud_.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

He jumps and lands half a mile away and manages somehow to stumble to Wally's place to spend the night.

The next morning, his mouth is dry, his stomach is doing backflips, and his head feels like it's been cleaved open, and he is positive that he is going to die.

"It's just a hangover," Wally tells him, looking bright and ready for the day. He lists off symptoms and their cures, drink lots of water, wear sunglasses, here there might be a pair in Artemis's car and he jets off to find them.

He doesn't tell Conner the cure for the thing in his chest that feels like it's sinking in.

.::.

He sees it coming when a pinched sort of look falls over Clark's face and Conner just shakes his head.

"Please." He puts his hand up. "Please. Don't give me any advice. I've done it all already. I've eaten the chocolate frosting, I've slept for three straight days, I've worked out until the machines broke. There is nothing you could recommend that I haven't already done."

Clark smiles a little. "Huh," he says.

"So let's just finish this in peace," Conner says, and he digs his fork into his apple pie and moves it around his plate so he can look like he's doing something.

"Conner."

"What?"

"I was just going to say, maybe you should talk to her."

Conner can't believe what he's hearing. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because... just no. I don't need a reason. My pie's getting cold."

Clark reaches over with his fork and takes his entire pie. Conner sits back and folds his arms over his chest and feels like a child.

"I can't," he insists.

"Can't what?" Clark asks gently.

"I can't keep doing this." He doesn't know how he can explain what exactly 'this' was to Clark, isn't sure whether he even wanted to talk about it, doesn't even want to think about it. 'This' is a shadow he's under, a wave continuously crashing into him, a scream that sounds the moment he thinks he's about to fall asleep that jars him awake instantly, constant and everlasting hyperawareness that she is no longer by his side, as she had been his entire life, however short it is. There was only M'gann, and the rest was ashes and now there is nothing but ashes.

Clark nods like he knows what's happening and Conner takes his pie back while he is distracted but he doesn't eat it and ends up just wrapping it up and taking it to Gar.

At night, he slips into M'gann's room while she sleeps and stands by the door, listening to her heartbeat, and he feels her touching his mind almost absently, like fingers trailing over his skin, light as a feather, almost not even there at all.

"Conner," she sighs in her sleep.

"I'm here," he finds himself saying, and he crawls into bed with her and wraps her in his arms and thinks, really thinks, about whether he can even make it on his own, without her. All the drinking and the attempted fucking and the failed writing and jumping off buildings and everything he's done, he's done to get her off his mind but now he realizes, as he runs his hands through her hair and breathes in her familiar scent, that he cannot, will never be able to get her off his mind. She will always be there. He just has to get used to living like that.

He leaves before she wakes up and over breakfast, she gives him strange looks, like she knows something happened but she isn't quite sure what.

She pulls him aside on his way to the training room and asks, in a near whisper, "Did you come to my room last night?"

He thinks about how easy it would be to fall to the ground and beg her to take him back. She might, after a fashion, and he would get this ridiculous weight off his chest. They'd fall back into the old routine easily, like he never left. He could go back to sleeping in her room because his is too small and they would have conversations in their heads and he'd feel safe because she'd be there and together, they are unstoppable.

Her eyes bore into his. She could lift the truth right out of his head but she waits for a reply.

"Nope," he says.

She nods, her cheeks touched with pink, and she mumbles, "Sorry. Must have been a dream. Hello, Megan."

She goes back to the kitchen, he goes on to the training room, the feeling that he's a little lost is still there, gnawing at the edges of his consciousness like it's a part of him now, but his head is clearer and he's ready, maybe, for whatever it is that's left.

._fin_.

**A/N: Hi! So, this is the first of a series of one shots set during the time skip between season 1 and season 2, and while I have a few chapters lined up somewhere in my head, I would just die for some prompts from you guys. If there's something you want to see, PM me! Give me a pairing or a friendship or a single character and three word prompts or a song or a quote, and I'll see what I can dish out for you. :)**


	2. on rooftops

on rooftops

Rooftops are their thing, specifically theirs. Dick knows all the really good rooftops in Gotham, the places where the view of the city is unparalleled, even in Bruce's office in Wayne Tower. And Wally knows all the really good rooftops in Central City, and has even found an easy way to the top of the arch and sometimes they would sit up there, chow down whatever Wally has in his suit at the time, and watch the fog of light pollution hovering over the city, obscuring stars but still pretty, Dick supposes, in a sad sort of way.

Wally talks, as he is wont to do, and Dick chimes in, in between stuffing his face and staring out at the twinkling lights of the Midwestern city, and there's a calm that only comes in high places where he is near invisible and with his closest friend, until it is utterly shattered with the last three words of a sentence that Dick doesn't hear the beginning of: _leave the life_.

He turns sharply, and behind the medium of his domino mask he scans every part of Wally's face until he is sure that he isn't being had. Then, he allows himself to say, "What?"

Wally shrugs, and his goggles reflect the cityscape before them. "I don't know."

"What don't you know?"

"I don't know, I don't know. Nevermind." He crams a handful of chips into his mouth and Dick thinks he hears him say, "I knew this would happen."

"Wait." Dick doesn't know why he feels like the rug has been pulled out from under him. "Are you saying... you want out?"

"Well, maybe. Yeah."

"_Why_?"

Wally's eyebrows go up slowly. "Why do I want out?"

"Yes, why do you want out?" he repeats in a flat voice. He doesn't usually find himself on the other side of a misunderstanding. It's a strange feeling of not knowing exactly what is going on, and the fact that this is the one person he has always understood so well is unnerving. "You can't want out of the life, you're the one who forced yourself into it when you did that experiment."

"Yeah, nevermind," Wally mutters, and he opens another bag of chips.

After a minute of considering his options, Dick decides to go with _nag until they relent_.

"Okay, let's say you left the life," he says, trying to sound reasonable instead of like a wheedling kid. "Let's say you left, what would you do?"

Wally contemplates a chip shaped like a teardrop. "I don't know, Dick. Go to college, probably."

"Okay! College. And why can't you do that and be Kid Flash at the same time?"

"This chip looks funny. Should I eat it?"

Dick looks from the chip to the boy sitting beside him. He doesn't look much like a boy anymore; there's a few days' growth smeared across his jaw and he's taller, bigger. Dick still sees that kid with the freckles and the tan lines on his too pale face from the goggles, the one that's too excitable for his own good, that almost got himself blown up so he could be meta, special, different. It's beyond Dick, utterly beyond him, why he would want to be normal, now that he's extraordinary and entering the best years of his life.

Wally holds the chip up and analyzes it from all angles. And Dick decides to let it go this once.

"I dare you to."

"If I mutate into a monster, will you kill me?"

"Probably."

"Wow, Dick, I always knew you'd be a good friend."

"The greatest."

Wally nudges him with a crumb covered finger. "The greatest."

.::.

Rooftops are inherently theirs, everyone knows, especially Artemis, so Dick is thrown a curve when he lands silently on the top of the building he meets Wally at every other Sunday and sees the blonde of her hair catching the light of the setting sun. He quickly crouches behind an air ventilation system, a tangle of steel and plastic, and watches them as they sit in a companionable quiet, their legs dangling over the void, Wally's hands flat on the ground behind him as he leans back, Artemis's head on his shoulder. It's nothing but it feels intimate and Dick knows he should either make his presence known or disappear but then Artemis says, "He doesn't want to lose you," and he knows, he _knows_ she's talking about him.

"He isn't losing me, Jesus Christ," Wally says with a groan. "I'll be in the same country and everything. There's probably a zeta tube in Palo Alto. I can literally visit him whenever he wants me to."

"It's not the same. He'll still be working, and you'll be out."

"Yeah, but he can still see me whenever—"

"Are you really that stupid?" she snaps.

"Are you really that stupid?" he repeats in a high pitched impression of Artemis's voice, which earns him a slap on the back of the head. "Ow. Okay. I know what you're trying to say, but he's just being weird. He literally cannot comprehend it. It will not pass through his brain. Like I'm talking in another goddamn language."

"Well, he's _your_ best friend, so you are the only one who can drill it into his skull."

Dick feels an ache in his knuckles and glances down, seeing how tightly he's holding onto the edge of the air ventilator, and when he lets go, he has to stretch his fingers all the way out to get the blood flowing again.

Artemis continues, oblivious to Dick's discomfort, to his silent urges for her to shut up and go away, "You have to tell him, because if he finds out from someone else, it'll get ugly."

"I know," Wally says, in a quieter voice. "I know that. I'll do it."

She gets to her feet after giving him a swift kiss. "See you later?"

"Okay."

She hops off the edge of the rooftop and Dick hears her boots colliding with the fire escape. Wally stays where he is, staring off into the sunset, and Dick stays where he is, hunched in the shadows. Palo Alto. He knows he should be proud but all he can feel is the need to sigh very heavily. He tries for a moment to imagine a domesticated Wally, going to college and working and not doing anything remotely heroic and only using his powers to mow his lawn or something. It feels like a terrible waste. In the end, he too hops off the rooftop and sends Wally a text saying he can't make it.

_No prob, I've got a hot date with a certain blonde archer_, he writes back.

Dick sends off a cursory _LOL_ even though his face is showing as much emotion as a brick.

.::.

Rooftops have been theirs since the day Batman and the Flash decided to pair them off to patrol Central City a few months after Wally began exhibiting powers. The mentors took on a threat in Gotham while Wally and Dick sat on the top of a skyscraper and ate everything in Wally's suit.

Batman came to collect Dick and Wally asked when they could do it again, and Batman configured the earliest version of the schedule they still use. The next meeting came and Dick waited for Wally on top of Wally's school and Wally brought with him a bag of marshmallows that they roasted over the remnants of heat from a small explosion Dick created and controlled with expert hands.

"I thought it'd just be me and Uncle Barry but this is nice," Wally said as he watched Dick spear a marshmallow on a batarang and hold it over the fire. "This is easier with a friend."

Dick had a lot to say about how reckless recreating the lab accident that had turned his uncle into a speedster was, and that Wally was a little careless and a lot dumb, but his words struck and Dick stared into the glowing embers and the ash tracks the explosion had created and realized he was right. He had been alone, and now he wasn't. And it was easier.

And Wally, barely fourteen, still caught in the thrall of heroics and the idea that that was his to be his new life from then on, looked at Dick and asked, "Do you ever want to be normal?"

"Isn't it too late for you to be asking around for advice?" Dick said.

"I'm not, I'm just asking to ask. Do you?"

Dick shook his head. "No. This is it."

Something flashed over Wally's face but he brushed it off and stuffed a blackened marshmallow into his mouth and grinned. Dick was eleven. He just grinned right back.

.::.

Rooftops are theirs, and Dick doesn't know who will lounge around on the concrete top of a high rise with him when Wally's off on the other side of the country being normal.

"I'm going to have to replace you," Dick says nonchalantly, already bringing up a list of people in his head, scratching off a few right off the bat. Maybe Zatanna. Or Kaldur. "I hope you understand how grueling this will be for me."

"I know, I'm one of a kind," Wally mutters, smiling, but it doesn't quite touch his face, and he turns to stare out at the city laid out before them.

"No, you aren't. I'm replacing you right now. That makes you one in, like, ten."

"Ten?"

"Ten."

"I'm a little offended."

"And I'm plenty onended, so. There's that."

Wally smiles again. It's sad, small, and Dick feels like there's a person sitting on his chest. He pretends to be busy checking something in his utility belt as he says, "Why did you even force these powers on yourself if you were just gonna bail a few years later? I don't get it."

"Neither do I," Wally says. "I guess I overestimated the responsibility."

"Is that it?" Dick asks, disappointed, although he can't exactly tell why. "Because you can't handle the responsibility?"

"Nah."

"What, then?"

Wally casts him a sidelong glance. "You'll laugh."

"I probably will."

He shrugs and says, "Artemis," and Dick doesn't laugh, he groans.

"Are you kidding me? For a girl? And a girl who knows you're Kid Flash, no less, I mean, getting out doesn't even mean anything, _she already knows who you are_."

"Yeah, I knew you wouldn't get it." He turns fully so that he's facing Dick, sitting perfectly still for once, not fidgeting or tapping his feet or eating, just being. "I love the life, I love working and I love running and I'll never stop, but I also love Artemis, and I love what we have. There's something here, something good, and I want to give it a chance to grow. And it can't grow if we're under constant danger basically all the time. Dick, this might be it, dude." And he sounds so excited, like he used to about going to McDonald's after patrol when they were first starting out, that Dick can't keep back a smile despite himself.

"Don't you dare say true love," Dick says warningly.

Wally laughs. They sit in silence for a beat, Dick swinging his feet over the sheer twenty story drop, Wally still unmoving, like a sculpture.

"I'm just saying," Dick says, putting his hands up. "If your children end up being speedsters too, then you can count me the hell out of babysitting."

It looks like something lifts from Wally's shoulders, and Dick is suddenly aware, like a switch has been flicked, just how much Dick's disapproval has been weighing on him.

"Dick," he begins, but Dick just shakes his head and tries to keep his smile up.

"It's okay, KF."

"No, I just... I'm sorry. I know I'm kinda leaving you high and dry but this is something I have to see out."

"I know."

"You're still my BFF," Wally adds, batting his eyelashes.

"I better be," Dick says.

Wally gets to his feet. He's in civvies. Dick supposes he should start getting used to seeing him like this.

"Alright, man, I have to go home. I have a test tomorrow."

"Wait," Dick says quickly. He feels like something is dawning on him, slowly and then suddenly, like he's seeing the punch coming but the impact still shocks him, and he looks up at Wally and realizes that he will never go on another mission with him, never patrol with him, never find him lounging around in the Cave and just hang out with him, never rely on his presence for backup, never meet with him on a rooftop in the city with the world sprawled out beneath them like it isn't even real and they're either kings of it all or the only people left anywhere. It's like a kick in the gut, like he's getting one of his legs cut off, and Dick can't even speak for a moment.

Wally sits back down beside him.

"So, like," Dick says, trying to sound casual, but there's desperation in his words anyway, "what am I supposed to do, Wally?"

Silence. Sirens and helicopters and the wind whistling past them, the background noises of a busy city, people breathing and living and blissfully unaware.

"Dude," Wally says, and he's that skinny kid with the freckles again, "you really think I'd leave unless I thought you'd be okay without me?"

Dick smiles. Wally claps his shoulder and gets up again.

"We're gonna have to think up another schedule," he says.

"See how much trouble you cause me?" Dick asks, sighing.

Wally laughs a laugh that stays on the rooftop long after he's gone.

.::.

Rooftops are theirs, even after Dick has brought a rotating cast of characters to it frequently, to fill up the Wally-sized hole left behind, and Wally traces a _Zatanna was here_ written in black marker on the floor of the top of a building in Gotham and smiles.

"So, you come here to deface public property, huh?" he asks, grinning.

Dick laughs. "What's a little graffiti every now and then?"

"My God, he's gone dark side!"

They sit on the edge of the building and Dick feels a thousand years older than the last time he had met with Wally on a rooftop, still in Robin's red and black. He supposes they've both changed, and that it wasn't all for the worse.

Wally shows him pictures of his new home and the campus and Artemis and their dog and it's all so very normal that it's like a neon sign has been attached to Wally's head, glaring and painfully obvious. Dick listens to the city, as alive as the two of them, to Wally eating with his mouth hanging open as he describes everything in copious detail, and if he closes his eyes, it's almost like nothing's changed at all.

._fin_.

**A/N: Yes, hi, hello, thanks for reading, and if there's a prompt you wanna see, send me a PM!**


	3. parlor tricks

parlor tricks

High noon, and Dick hangs upside down, hands and feet bound, suspended in a net in a shadowy alley where Zatanna finds and observes him from her comfortable perch on the ground.

"Hi," he says, a little exertion in his voice, a little red in his cheeks, a little smile on his face.

Zatanna returns the greeting and squints through the net. "No utility belt?"

"Big bad took it," he says with an upside down shrug. A bead of sweat travels down the length of his neck and face and disappears into his hair. "A little help, Zee? That's why I called you, remember?"

"Oh, I remember," she says, poking her finger into his cheek. "But you look so cute in this position. I think I'll stay and admire it for a bit."

"You're diabolical," he tells her. "And you call yourself a hero." But he plays along and pretends to straighten up, blinking a few times to keep her in focus, and she can't keep back the grin that stretches across her face. "What do you want?"

"Let me think," she says. She steps back and circles him, takes in broad shoulders, muscles strained and pushing against the shiny black of his uniform, sweat beading and sliding down his face and neck.

"Don't think for too long. I'm starting to feel light headed."

"Yes, I've heard I have that effect."

He laughs. "Decided yet?"

"Why, yes, I think I have." She taps her chin with her finger and says, "I'd like to know your name."

She can almost feel his eyes narrowing at her through his domino mask, even as the corners of his lips tilt upward. "My name," he repeats.

"Your name. And I'll release you. But if you don't want to give it to me, I understand. I'll just leave you here to call the next person on your SOS list."

He's fully grinning now, playful and sweet and Zatanna doesn't know she's leaning closer to him until she can count the freckles on his nose.

"What's it gonna be?" she asks in a whisper.

"Dick Grayson," he says immediately, without a second thought.

She feels something swell inside her as she leans back and snaps the cord holding him up. He falls, hard, to the floor and she unties the ropes around his wrists and ankles. She's getting to her feet when he grabs her hand suddenly and pulls her back down.

"I don't have an SOS list," he says. "You were the first person that came to mind."

She smiles and lets her hand trail over his forehead, and she tucks a lock of dark hair behind his ear. "While we're confessing, I already knew your name. I just wanted to hear you say it."

She's out of the alley before he can even get to his feet.

.::.

Sunrise, and Dick is pressed against the side of a warehouse on the waterfront, encased in high-density polyurethane foam up to the neck, and Zatanna leans against the wall beside the hardened foam and smiles at the exasperated look on what she can see of his face.

"Hi," he says around a sigh.

"I'm starting to think I'm the only person on your go-to list," she tells him.

He stares out at the water. His jaw is set, his mouth pressed into a thin line. "You're number two on my speed dial."

"And who's number one?"

He turns his head with some difficulty and faces her.

"And you don't want Daddy finding you like this," she says. "Well, I can respect that."

"What'll it be this time?" he asks, and despite himself there is a smile threatening to brighten up his sour face.

"Let me think."

"Don't think for too long," he warns. "My arm itches."

"You're so cute when you're completely helpless," she coos.

He laughs. "Got it yet?"

"I think I do. I would like to see your face."

"My face," he repeats, and she gets the feeling that underneath the mask, he is scanning her every feature.

"Your face. Or I could leave you here to the next person on your speed dial." She pushes off the wall and circles around to stand before him, hands on her hips, waiting. She steps closer, close enough to feel his breath come out and touch her face, close enough to smell the city on him, exhaust fumes and cigarettes and the night.

"Okay," he says.

She reaches up and peels the mask away, and bright blue hits her like the sun rising behind them.

She feels her smile when she sees his, and the corners of his eyes crinkle like they're smiling too. He starts to say something and she shushes him, and they stand in silence until she takes a step back and puts his mask back on for him and breaks through the foam with a word whispered backwards.

He stumbles and she shoves her shoulder under his arm and pushes him back to the wall to regain his balance, and he puts his arm around her and squeezes.

"You're actually number one on my speed dial," he tells her. "I just didn't want to tell you at first because it would make me seem like a sap."

"While we're on the topic of confessions..." she trails and he gapes at her until she can almost see the blue even through the opaque white.

"How the hell—?"

"I stalked you in your school once," she says. "But I wanted you to show me yourself."

They watch the light break over the water and she lays her head on his shoulder, then she leaves him standing on the waterfront, staring after her.

.::.

Midnight, and Dick is in shackles, his arms stretched out, each hand cuffed and linked to a pin in the ground by long, thick chains, his legs bolted to the wall behind him, and Zatanna stands in the doorway of the abandoned apartment and clicks her tongue.

"We have got to stop meeting like this," she says in response to his meek, "Hi."

"I would've thought you'd like the idea of me in chains," he says.

"It had definitely crossed my mind." She steps into the room and looks around, at cobwebs and shadows and the even coating of dust on the floors, the walls. "Very creepy."

"Villains aren't known for their hospitality, unfortunately," he says.

She crosses the room and places her hand flat against the blue emblem on his chest, and he isn't hiding his smile so why should she hide hers?

"What do you want now?" he asks, and it's a whisper, brushing against her face, warm and soft.

"Let me think," she whispers back.

"Take your time. No one's tied up in chains or anything."

"I think I've got it," she says. "I want a memory."

His smile falters for only a fraction of a second and she wouldn't have caught it at all if all her attention hadn't been on his mouth at that moment.

"A memory," he repeats.

"Yes," she says. "A memory. Tell me something from your childhood."

He hesitates, and she sees him glance at the chains holding his arms straight out as though deliberating whether it's worth it or not.

"Or I could leave you here and someone not as nice as I am could take advantage of a handsome young man in chains," she says. She presses against him and places her chin on his chest, looking up at him, and she can feel his heart beat fast through their clothes.

"I remember cotton candy," he says. "I remember making it with my dad at the circus, and he was teaching me how to spin it onto a paper cone. You have to spin the cone and while you're spinning that, you circle the cone around inside the machine. He said, 'it's like the way the earth spins by itself but also circles the sun'. I hadn't known that the earth spun around the sun, or that it spun on its own axis, I must have been six years old. And I pictured the earth on a cone and someone spinning it around and circling it around the sun, like it was cotton candy and some big thing was getting ready to eat it."

He laughs a little, but it's quiet and kind of sad, and she whispers the words that turn the chains into loose threads that he shakes off to wrap his arms around her and pull her close.

"You were a pretty dumb kid," she says, and his chest rumbles under her cheek with another laugh, and when she says, "I'm sorry about your dad," he is still.

"How—?" he begins, but he shakes his head.

She tells him anyway. "You always knew what to do, what to say to me when Fate took my dad. You were great. Almost too great. I just guessed."

He pulls back a little to smile at her. "You're full of surprises, Zee," he says.

"Or maybe you're just too easy," she teases.

He looks at her like he's thinking about kissing her, and she's definitely thinking about kissing him, but they end up sitting on the floor of the dusty room with moonlight blasting in through the broken window and collecting in the shattered glass on the sill that glitters like a hundred little diamonds. She gets up to leave and she feels his eyes on her until she's across the street and around the corner.

.::.

Sunset, and the city is colored orange and pink and purple, and Dick is flat on his back on the rooftop of a high rise, his arms and legs held to the ground with magic that crackles and snaps, and Zatanna watches from behind the stairway that leads into the building, her hands out controlling the force of the binds.

He struggles for a minute, then collapses back onto the ground, breathless, and stares up at the sky and all its shades of orange until she's thinking about letting him go, and then he says, "Computer, call Zatanna."

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She picks up with a quiet, "Boy Wonder."

"Zee," he says, his voice measured and even. "How is my favorite magician?"

"Busy," she says. "I'm going to have to call you back."

"Wait," he says, but she's already hung up.

He stares up at the sky some more, and she waits for him to call someone else, but the minutes tick by and she realizes he isn't going to call anyone. He's making himself comfortable, as comfortable as he can get with his arms and legs stretched out and bound to the concrete. She hears a deep sigh, some humming, and then the sky darkens, goes from mostly orange to mostly purple, and when she thinks her face is going to split in half from all the smiling, she lets him go.

He gets up gingerly, looking around, and she steps out from behind the stairway.

He stares, mouth agape, in shock. And then, he starts to laugh. "No way, I should've known," he says. "You're never too busy for me."

"That's one way to put it," she says.

He closes the distance between them, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. "So you brought me up here. Why?"

"It was an experiment," she says. "I was testing out a hypothesis."

"An experiment." His mouth tilts up into half a smile. "That sounds interesting."

"The outcome was," she tells him.

"What was your hypothesis?"

She slides her hand out of his grip and circles him, crossing her arms. "That maybe the reason why I always get called to bail you out of the weird positions I find you in is because you don't call anyone else. That I'm not just your first choice, I'm your only choice."

His hand darts out to grab her waist as she starts another revolution and she stops, watching, waiting.

He says, "Maybe that's because I trust you. Because I can count on you."

"That's what I concluded," she says.

"And are you happy with your conclusion?"

"Maybe. It means I still have to bail you out, though. It's tough work, pretending to be put out that I have to get you out of chains."

He laughs, and it dances in the air the way his laughs used to when he was still Robin. "I might deign to stay in chains a little longer for you, if that's what you want."

"There's the silver lining I was hoping for," she says, and he kisses her. It's not unexpected, she sees it coming a mile away waving a red flag, but it's still soft, it's still sweet, it's exactly what she thought it would be.

They're sitting on the edge of the building, and she's holding his hand on her lap, when he says, "I may or may not have guessed that the magic holding me to the floor was yours, and that you were conducting an experiment."

She raises her eyebrows, impressed. "How?"

He shrugs, the city lights bright on the shiny black of his mask, his suit. "Felt like something you would do."

"While we're confessing, it wasn't an experiment so much as just wanting you to say it."

He smiles, and she smiles, and they stay on the rooftop until dawn breaks through the darkness and they leave together.

._fin_.


End file.
